


Heartbeat (Leave It for Another Night Remix)

by bocje_ce_ustu



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Erik Lehnsherr is not a Happy Bunny, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Remix, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: “Slow down,” was the only thing Erik said, wiping away wetness from under Charles’s eye. This was not the first time, but Erik couldn’t remember Charles getting so worked up for one of his dreams.“I will.” He mirrored Erik’s gesture by rubbing the heel of his hand across his other cheek. “Don’t worry about it.”





	Heartbeat (Leave It for Another Night Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newbie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newbie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Heartbeat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9904106) by [newbie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newbie/pseuds/newbie). 



 

He woke up with a scream. Or, perhaps, a scream woke him up.

Either way, the scream was in his ears when Erik jerked awake, eyes roaming the pale grey starlight creeping in through the blinders, an alien sensation clawing at his throat. Erik never screamed himself awake, no matter how heartbreaking or bloodcurdling his nightmare had been.

Then his mind caught up, wresting itself free from the last tendrils of mist and calling upon his senses. He recognized the voice.

He was up and out of the door before the last echoes of the scream died out in the slumbering hallway.

Just as he got to Charles’s door he heard a stirring of hushed murmurs, felt more than one key turning in its lock while cuts of light flickered one after the other lining the thresholds along the corridor.

He stopped and looked, senses poised, wondering if he should lock the other doors before slipping in.

He didn't wonder long. Soon the telltale cutoff of half a dozen switches prompted the lights beneath the doors to turn off in a quick sequence. The murmur died down and the couple of doors that were creaking open inched backwards and clicked again shut.

The hallway was silent once again, leaving Erik alone in the darkness. He opened the door and crept inside.

Charles was sitting with his back to the headrest, chest heaving and twin streaks of silver down his cheeks. His eyes were wide and alert when Erik sat down on the edge of the bed, his heart hammering wildly in his chest in a counterpoint to Erik’s own.

“Slow down,” was the only thing Erik said, wiping away wetness from under Charles’s eye. This was not the first time, but Erik couldn’t remember Charles getting so worked up for one of his dreams.

“I will.” He mirrored Erik’s gesture by rubbing the heel of his hand across his other cheek. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Is it always so…” Words wouldn’t come, but Charles didn’t need them after all.

Charles shook his head slowly. “It’s just the way it is,” he said. “No, don’t apologize.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Charles cocked a brow, skeptical. One of his hands found Erik’s on the sheets, twining their fingers with a gentle squeeze.

Erik waited for the gentle nudge at the back of his head, the silent request to address the images still flashing behind his eyelids, no less haunting now than they had been a year before.

It had been a year since he’d last held them in his arms. Since he had seen the light leave their eyes.

Yet reliving that moment again and again wasn’t torture enough: Charles had to live through it too when that happened. And Charles would want to talk about it, of course he would.

“I don’t think I’ll be getting much more sleep in tonight. Might as well resume our game,” Charles said instead.

The last game they’d had was halfway through, a battle frozen in time since two nights earlier.

It had been that way every time since Erik had returned to the mansion – and even before that, if he thought about it. Leaving a game unfinished for the next time had almost become a little ritual of theirs, as if that was the thin thread tying Erik to that place, keeping him there as long as a match awaited its conclusion.

They reached the study and took their places at the board table in silence, letting gaze and touch speak for them.

Some nights, touch lingered; some, only casual whispers crossed the distance, no less soft because of that. That night belonged to these, with its murmured meditation and the quiet clutter of chess pieces making their way toward the center of the board.

The first words that were not about the game were a shock, more for Erik than for Charles.

Saying them out loud coated them in viscous, pitch-black reality.

“Maybe… Sometimes I think…” Charles moved his pawn across the board, nodding at him to keep going. “Sometimes I think that I could have done something… anything… that I could have saved them.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “If I’d been just a little faster, just five minutes earlier… If I’d just let it fall instead…” That last piece of speculation, too terrible to even think about, he had caressed so many times in his thoughts that it had long lost every shade of guilt that had at first come with it.

“You chose life,” Charles said, predictably and unnecessarily. “That in itself can never be wrong.”

Erik shook his head in despair. “They were my family and I failed them!”

The sudden outburst rang in the quiet of the dead of the night. Charles stared at him and nodded slowly.

“Yes, you did.”

The words died on Erik’s tongue.

“That’s what you want me to say, right?” Charles gave him a wry smile. “But you didn’t fail them, Erik. Magneto did.”

The militia had come to his home, to his family, to take him, yes. But not Erik Lehnsherr, not even Henryk Gursky. They had come for Magneto.

“They saw through the mask to your heart. Your family would be proud of you.”

“If they weren’t gone,” he muttered. And he’d never had the chance to say a proper goodbye. He didn’t even know where they had been buried, couldn’t conjure up an image of their resting place if he tried.

He picked up a bishop, blindly, and made a move he would soon regret.

Charles’s queen advanced. “We were a family once,” Charles whispered, almost too low to be heard. “We can be again.”

Erik looked down at the board. Charles had left him an opening.

He always did.

 

***

 

They were deep into their second game when Charles’s moves grew noticeably more sluggish, his eyes drooping and his chin ever sliding off the fist it was propped on with a start.

He had scarcely rested in the last year, diving into work as soon as his recovery has consented it, more often than not dragging Erik along under the pretense of needing a soundboard to run his ideas of project and implementations for the school through. Truth was most decisions took an agreement between Charles and Hank, regardless of Erik’s opinion, but Erik welcomed the distraction.

After helping with the mansion’s reconstruction, Erik had felt his presence was no longer needed. Yet in the nights spent hunched over semester planning and learning more ways to misuse the English language than he thought possible through endless piles of tests, his grief was forgotten. And the days that went by dividing bloody-nosed, black-eyed teenagers and threatening the umpteenth parent who couldn’t wait to be relieved from their lava-spitting daughter, those days had begun feeling like a routine. They felt like life. The life he’d thought was over a year before.

Charles’s mouth gaped in a loud yawn.

Erik stood. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

“Nonsense.” Charles recklessly reached for his last standing rook.

“If you make that move, I’ll be in checkmate in two.”

Charles made an affronted noise in the back of his throat, blinking owlishly as he recognized – with some difficulty – just how slim his chances were.

“I can still—” Charles peered at the board doubtfully.

One move could have saved him, but he was too far gone to see the whole process through. At this rate, Erik would have him in two other moves.

“Just leave it for another time.”

“I’m fine, I just—”

Erik circled the table and put an end to Charles’s protests by sliding an arm around his shoulders and the other under his knees, lifting him into his own arms.

Once Charles had his arms secured around Erik’s neck – more for comfort than for anything else, really – he all but proved Erik’s point by smothering a yawn into Erik’s chest.

“You’ve gotten a little old for this.” A crescent-shaped curve of lips pressed on his skin through his bedclothes.

“Shut up.”

“Be a dear and—”

Erik grunted. Before Charles had a chance to finish his sentence, the wheelchair had already risen from the ground and followed them along the corridor.

Step after step he found himself walking closer to his nightmare, to his sweat-drenched pillow and disheveled sheets. He saw himself again at Charles’s door, and every other night they had woken up, wide-eyed and breathless with horror. Would he dream again that night?

Perhaps, if he asked Charles, he could sleep in his bed for the rest of the night. The very thought stung, though, and he couldn’t fathom voicing it. What of all the other nights, when his nightmares would strike again? How many more midnight matches where every word was a knife to the heart? Hadn’t he stalled enough?

Soon Charles was tucked again into his bed, and Erik was still fighting with the words that wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

“I need… I need to go… away for a while,” he said at last.

 _Need to be with them_ , he wanted to say, but couldn’t. He couldn’t be with them yet, if ever. It was pointless, all of it was, and yet somehow the promise of proximity kept pushing him in that direction, as if it would solve anything. As if going back was the only way to move on.

Charles’s smile was soft. He reached out with a hand, briefly touching his palm to Erik’s sternum, a warm impression that would simmer long after the hand withdrew. “I’ll be here.”

“I know.” Fingers caught fingers, held on, curled tight.

He wanted something, wanted to do something more. He had forgotten how.

Erik looked at their joined hands, mind hollowed. He would have known what to do, once. Now something wrenched his gut down, and his fingers were glued in place, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted to go after all.

There was nothing for him out there. Only death and grief.

There was nothing for him in here but shadows – the long shadows of a great man, but shadows nonetheless. And that phantom tingling sensation in his feet, as if he’d stayed too long in the same position and needed to get going, no matter how he would hurt trying to.

Charles’s free hand wrapped around his cheek, and Erik looked up to meet his gaze. Charles’s eyes reflected back at him the same words he had said earlier that night, _We were a family once_.

Before him was the only family he had left. It hurt to look.

His lips rested awkwardly on Charles’s temple, then his head was welcomed in the hollow of Charles’s shoulder for a brief hug. His heart beat slow and steady, quiet like the ebb and flow of the tide while Erik’s was rabbited and erratic.

Erik stood and turned before another look could change his mind. He paused with a hand on the doorknob. “This is not a goodbye.”

“I know,” Charles said, a smile in his voice. He sounded as if he already had the answer to every question of his and Erik’s both.

And if Charles did, Erik reasoned opening the door, he would figure it out as well.

 

 


End file.
